A place for miscellaneous items that don’t fit well in our existing categories – possibly temporarily.

Too Hot to Handle?    Not all early nephrologists ‘fitted’ in the UK scene.  Es Will describes four examples – unable to find the right niche here, they each worked abroad for much of their career. Why? Individual style and personality? Or perhaps the UK renal community should have done better to welcome them? Read on. ..

An inadvertent place for ritual in renal replacement technologies: an unexpected exposure by historical clinical IT? Es Will points out that clinical computing was  a valuable adjunct to haemodialysis from the 1980s onwards because it allowed  documentation of the necessary repetition of a complicated but standardised clinical routine. In a non-medical context, such repetitive activity  may be called ‘ritualisation’ and thinking of dialysis as ‘ritual’ has interesting  social and healthcare implications for patients and staff. Read on……

Nephrological profit from Time to Tinker? Es Will & Nick Marks remind us of  a definition of ‘tinkering’ as an intellectual and practical behaviour which has brought notable benefit to nephrology, for example in the development and refining of haemodialysis. Read on….

Last Updated on June 13, 2025 by John Feehally